The Real Monsters
by LadyChakotay
Summary: Spike and Dawn have a conversation about Buffy following the events in the episode Empty Places.


This story takes place during the episode _Touched._ It's a scene that I would've liked to have seen after Spike learned that they'd all gone Traitor on Buffy in _Empty Places_. She's a bigger person than I am, I'll tell ya that much. She showed up and saved their ungrateful butts, even after they turned against her and kicked her out of her own house.

Usually a Star Trek: Voyager author, this is my first Buffy fanfic …

The Real Monsters

"Spike … Wait!"

Dawn stumbled frantically out the door and off the porch, desperate to catch up to the Vampire before he moved out of her range of sight.

"Spike!"

Unfazed, he kept walking without breaking stride. Fighting back her tears and determined not to cry, Dawn ran after him.

"SPIKE!" She knew he had enhanced hearing along with his other Vampire senses. "Why are you pretending you can't hear me?"

That worked. Spike stopped in his tracks. His black leather jacket swayed slightly on his abrupt stop, but that was the only movement. His body froze, rigid and still as if time had simply screeched to a halt in the middle of his stride.

He didn't have to turn around and glare at her. Dawn could feel the power of tumultuous emotions bubbling inside him, the paradoxical mixture of burning rage and icy revulsion. It radiated off of him in waves.

"I'm not pretending," he said, a preternatural intonation shadowing his British accent. "It's a choice. I'm _choosing_ not to hear you."

"Why?" she demanded, stepping in front of him, her arms folded across her chest.

Spike locked eyes with her and despite her earlier bravado, Dawn felt a sudden rush of fear. His voice sounded controlled, but the twitching muscle just below his masculine cheekbone was evidence of the amount of self-restraint he was using.

Spike was pissed. And Dawn knew all too well that pissing off a Vampire, even one that fought with the good guys, was about as smart as sitting on a powder keg and playing with firecrackers.

Something was bound to explode.

Still she pressed on. "Why are you choosing not to hear me?"

"So that I don't kill you."

The words were spoken matter-of-factly, but the danger they carried with them was evident. He meant every word of it. Spike stepped around her as though she were no more an obstacle than a child's toy left carelessly in his path.

"You're going to say something like that to me and then just walk away?" Dawn asked indignantly.

"Better that than rip the tongue out of that pretty little mouth of yours, eh, Niblet?"

"WHAT are you talking about?"

_Fine, Little One_, Spike thought, _you want to play_ … He whirled to face her, the ice in his blue eyes causing her to gasp and take a couple steps back. "What do you _think_ I'm talking about?"

She knew. He didn't really need to say it. Her own guilt had been eating away at her already, even before Spike showed up at her house and told them what sorry, traitorous, sad excuses for human beings they all were.

"Buffy," she said softly, her eyes no longer meeting his stare.

"You're bloody right, Buffy."

Dawn wrung her hands nervously in front of her. "Look, you weren't even there. It was…"

"Damn right I wasn't there!" he interrupted, his previously controlled voice quickly rising to a full blown shout. "Never would've happened if I'd been there, would it?"

"Things happened, things that shouldn't have. Things you don't understand. You don't even know what you're talking about, Spike."

He laughed but there was no humor in it. "Oh, but I do. Things have been a bit sketchy of late. Plans gone awry, couple of Slayer wannabes got picked off, some got hurt. Anya's boy toy got an eyeball-ectomy. So you lot go on a witch hunt looking for someone to blame. Completely overlooking the big glowing elephant in the room …"

Dawn's brow wrinkled in confusion. "Elephant … glowing … _what_?" She stared at him through narrowed, suspicious eyes. "Spike, have you gone insane again?"

"Well if that isn't the whiney little pot calling the kettle black."

"Okay … you're losing me."

Spike rolled his eyes. "I should be so lucky."

Dawn shook her head as if trying to clear imaginary cobwebs from her brain. "Spike, WHAT are you talking about?"

"Well I'm talking about you people, aren't I?" he said as if he were speaking to the absolute stupidest person in the entire world. "You were all there with bells on to point fingers when I'd gone batty, but it's time to take a good look in the mirror, Niblet. Buffy's saved your lives over and over again and risked her own neck doing it. She never asked for anything in return. Not a thing … except your loyalty."

Dawn stared down at her hands, unable to meet his eyes.

"You wankers don't seem to get it," he continued. "This isn't some coven of naughty witches or a Vampire uprising. This is it. The Big One. This isn't _a_ fight, Dawn. It's _the_ fight! It makes everything else Buffy's been up against seem like a bloody tea party."

"She made some questionable decisions," Dawn volleyed.

"They were hers to make," Spike fired back. "What makes you lot think you can do better? The First Evil didn't come at us with a set of rules of engagement, for crying out loud! There's no book to read, no ancient text to translate that gives us all the answers. Buffy has no choice but to play it by ear and follow her instincts. She's the Slayer, Niblet. She's not God. It's absurd for you people to expect perfection, even from Buffy. The First fights dirty. When the bad guy's moves keep changing and there are no rules, a few mistakes are unavoidable!"

Dawn's cheeks flushed with righteous anger. "A few mistakes. A _few mistakes_? Is that what you call it? Girls died, Spike! Xander lost his eye!"

Spike ran a hand through his white hair in frustration. "Yeah, your darling Xander lost an eye. Pity, really. But the horrid truth is that it's a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. If The First wins, and he might – look how he's already divided you people who call yourself her friends, it won't matter how many eyes Xander has. Corpses don't see, Niblet. And the girls have been dying all along, courtesy of The Bringers. It's because of Buffy that those who are still alive have remained that way.

"I can almost overlook their mutiny. They're potentials, not yet Slayers, being thrown into the big fight. They're frightened, and they're new."

His blue eyes locked with hers, making it nearly impossible for her to look away. "I expect nothing less from Faith. She's a backstabbing bitch, always has been. But Xander, Giles, and Willow … they're supposed to be her friends. And you … "

He let the unfinished accusation hang in the air for a moment, watching her squirm beneath her own guilt.

"You're her _sister_. You betrayed her, your own sister, your only family left in the whole world."

Dawn glared up at him, tears burning her eyes. "Don't you dare talk to me about betrayal! You tried to rape her and she begged you to stop."

Spike winced as if he'd been kicked in the stomach.

"You left her bruised and broken on the bathroom floor, Spike. So don't stand there looking down on me and lecturing me about loyalty."

Spike stared hard at her, silent for what seemed an eternity. Then, his crisp, icy voice returning, he said, "You're right, Niblet. I did. I did exactly what you said. And it's haunted me every moment of my miserable existence since then. But there was no subterfuge where I was concerned. I was a monster. Buffy knew it. I knew it. I allowed it to get the better of me, and I hurt her.

"Paid for it, too. I'll pay for it as long as I walk the Earth, I suspect."

"Why?" she said snidely. "Because you have a soul now?"

"That's right," he said with a slight nod of his head. "The instant my soul was put back into my body I saw with excruciating clarity all the pain and suffering I've caused. Not only to Buffy, but to the world. And the guilt was so powerful, so unbearable, there were times when I thought I couldn't survive it.

"But when I betrayed Buffy I was a monster. I went to the ends of the earth, suffered torture the likes of which I'd never imagined, to get my soul. And I did it because I wanted to _fee_l. I wanted to pay for what I've done.

"I hurt her sure enough. You're right about that. But as I said, I was a monster then. I'm a beast who became a person with a soul."

With a slightly trembling hand, he raised her chin and looked into her eyes. "But you … you're a person with a soul who became a beast. When you betrayed her you already had you're precious soul. So you tell me … who's really the monster?"

"It's different," she said through gritted teeth.

"As night and day," he agreed. "When I came back from my visit with the Keeper of Disembodied Souls you looked at me with such hatred for what I'd done, and rightly so. Do you remember what you told me? Hmm? That if I ever hurt Buffy again I'd wake up on fire…

"But I was what I was, love. I never pretended to be anything else. You, on the other hand, sat by and watched while she was raped in a different way, didn't you? Her power and her control of the situation, of her life, were forcibly taken from her by the people she loved most. You've all thought yourselves so superior to me. Xander, Willow, Giles … the whole lot of you. But at least when she begged me to stop I came to my senses and I stopped.

"You didn't stop though, did you, Dawn? You not only allowed them to strike her down in her own home, but after they'd all taken their shots, you delivered the final blow. Isn't that right?"

Huge tears rolled down Dawn's face, and Spike felt a pang of guilt for hurting her. It was quickly assuaged, however, by the image in his mind of the crushed expression that must've been on Buffy's face when she was ambushed by those she loved and trusted most in the world.

"I'm doing the right thing," Dawn sobbed, not sounding at all certain about it.

"Then you better get back to it," Spike said, turning his back to her as he walked away.

"Spike," she called after him.

"Go home to your new leader, Niblet. I've nothing more to say to you tonight."

Later that night, Spike held Buffy in his arms and listened to her small sobs, wiping the tears off of her cheeks, and he felt her pain more keenly than anything he'd ever endured in his life. He held her tightly to his chest, his fingers embedded in her honey blonde hair, and let the soft scent of her shampoo wash over him. And as he kissed her tenderly on the top of her head he finally understood …

It wasn't the soulless who were the real monsters. It was the people, the flesh and blood people with souls and hearts beating in their chests, who were capable of true bestiality, because they were like cannibals. They feasted away at each others souls. And they did it under the guise of love.

They were the monsters.


End file.
